


Sanctuary

by galaxysoup



Category: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: Epilogue, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 20:04:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8859154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxysoup/pseuds/galaxysoup
Summary: It’s always safe in the Garden.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonicshambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonicshambles/gifts).



> I may have listened to a lot of the _Secret Garden_ Broadway soundtrack while plotting this story. I have tried to keep to book canon as much as possible but some of the musical has probably crept in anyway, sort of like a ghost or a Greek chorus. :D

It’s Cousin Suz who finally stumbles across her hiding place in the windowseat of the Mouse Room, just long enough after the fight that Marie has long stopped feeling quite so furious and has started to feel a little resentful that no one has bothered to come for her yet. She has just enough time after the door opens to hunch her shoulders and stare broodingly out over the moor before Cousin Suz pushes back the curtains and says “Ah, that figures.”

Marie frowns out at the moor. Truthfully, she’s surprised it’s Cousin Suz who’s come - she’s older and spends more of her time at university than she does at the Manor, and Marie would have thought she’d have better things to do than chase down an errant younger cousin.

“Dickie deserved it.”

Suz laughs and sits down on the other end of the window seat. “Yeah, probably.”

Marie wastes a moment trying to remember how Suz and Dickie are related - there are enough of them that they mostly all assume ‘cousin’ and move on - and then decides she doesn’t care. 

“And I’d do it again.”

“Okay,” Suz says amiably. “Why did you choose this room to hide in?”

Marie deflates a little in the face of Suz’s indifference. “It’s creepy and I felt like it,” she says shortly.

“You think?” Suz says, eyeing the room speculatively. “I always liked this one myself. You know this was the room -”

“Where Grandmother Mary found the baby mice when she explored the house before she found the Garden,” Marie recites. “I _know._ ” The last thing she wants right now is a family history lesson. Best to head that one off as quickly as possible.

That gets a reaction from Cousin Suz, at least. She raises her eyebrows at Marie, holding her gaze until Marie gets uncomfortable enough to look away. She refuses to apologize, though.

“I was going to say this was the room Grandfather Colin liked to find things for most on his travels. That’s where all the mouse stuff came from. All over the world.”

Marie had always assumed it was coincidence and one of those terrible decorating choices that happens periodically when a house has been handed down for as long as this one has, which then gets fossilized and preserved by time until everyone refuses to fix it because It’s Traditional.

There are a lot of Traditions here. It’s annoying.

“Not a fan of history?” Suz says dryly.

Marie squirms a little bit. “No.”

Suz watches her. “How old are you?”

Marie squirms a little more. “Nine,” she says flatly.

“Ah,” Suz’s expression becomes very understanding. “You’re about ready to do your overnight. And let me guess, Dickie and the others have been saying all kinds of fun things about the Garden.”

“So what if they have?” Marie snaps. “I don’t believe them. They’re idiots.”

Suz looks amused. 

Marie scowls at her. She’s been to the Garden. She’s spent practically her entire childhood there. At every opportunity the family visits it. She knows it better than her bedroom. She knows it better than the _moor_. There’s nothing scary about it… in daylight.

“Are there really ghosts in the Garden?” Marie blurts out.

Suz looks surprised. “Is that what they’re saying now? In my day it was a night-blooming plant that would make you hallucinate. Interesting.”

Marie rolls her eyes. Like _that’s_ scary.

“Hey.” Suz pokes her arm until Marie deigns to look at her. “We’re always safe in the Garden. You know that, right?”

“It’s just a garden,” Marie mutters, deliberately leaving off the capital letter. It’s not like Suz will be able to hear the difference, but it makes her feel better.

“Hmm,” Suz says. “Do you know the story?”

“Of course I know the story,” Marie says disdainfully. _Everyone_ knows the story. They all practically learn it in the womb.

“Do you know after the story?” Suz asks, infuriatingly patient.

Marie gives her a narrow look. “What’s there to know after the story? Just a bunch of babies and things.”

Suz grins. “Get comfortable, kiddo. You’re about to learn Part Two.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It is a fine summer after Uncle Archie comes home - warm and bright and pleasant, so much so that for ever after when Mary thinks of it it is surrounded by a golden glow, just like the green veil that had covered everything as the Garden had come alive in the spring. They spend hours in the Garden, sometimes the three children and Dickon’s animals and sometimes just Mary and Colin and Uncle Archie, and it is every bit as splendid as Colin had imagined when he had decided upon his father’s surprise.

It is a little strange to Mary at first to have an adult in the Garden. Susan Sowerby and Ben Weatherstaff were of course adults as well, but although Mary is not by nature a creature given to much self-reflection she still senses that Uncle Archie is a different manner of adult altogether. The Garden is hers, hers and Colin’s and Dickon’s, but there is always the knowledge that the Garden is Uncle Archie’s as well, whether she likes it or not. It does not dampen her enjoyment of the summer, not when Colin is so clearly pleased, but it does remain in the back of her mind nonetheless. 

The summer seems to last forever, like the happy endings that come attached to stories meant to entertain children. Mary quite settles into it, although she does not realise that is what is happening. All she knows is that when Uncle Archie one day announces that he must go abroad again on business, it does not seem quite real. It seems as if two Uncle Archies can exist at the same time, that one can travel abroad but one will of course remain safely in the Garden as well. 

He does not remain in the Garden, or even the house, and it is something of a shock when he is suddenly gone again. Mary and Colin and Dickon got along quite well before Uncle Archie came back, and it angers Mary that it is upsetting to lose him again. 

He sends them packages from abroad - books and toys and a long letter about the gardens where he is staying - and Mary and Colin have such a huge row when they receive them that Mary storms out of the house afterwards to sit on the moor by herself. 

The wonderful golden bubble never quite rematerializes after that. Everything Colin does is irksome to Mary; every kind letter and thoughtful present she receives from Uncle Archie makes her feel sour and small. She does not understand it, and that makes her angry as well. 

She sits in the Garden and broods, quite sure that the only solution is to lock up the Garden again so she can live in it by herself and not be bothered by so many _people_ with their questions and their demands and their looking shocked at her when she’s anything short of pleasant and vacant and obliging. Mary despises being obliging. 

“You could still visit the Garden, of course,” Mary tells Dickon when she has outlined this plan. “You are the only human creature who has not become suddenly unbearable. _What._ ”

Dickon does not try to hide his smile. “I was just thinkin’ tha reminds me o’ some o’ my friends.”

Mary follows his gaze to Soot, playing nearby, and frowns. It seems to her that there would be worse fates than being a crow and getting to spend all one’s time flitting about and pecking at worms, so the comparison does not displease her. “What do you mean?”

Dickon rubs his nose and lowers himself to the ground next to her. “Eh… When a wild thing first meets me, they’re shy. Come a little closer, then run away again, come closer then run away. Tha has to be patient, and let th’ wild thing decide if you’re safe or not, see if they’re comfortable. Tha munnot pressure them nor put them in a cage.”

Mary tries to follow this analogy. “You’re saying I’ve been put in a cage?”

Dickon shakes his head, adjusting his cap as he tries to put his thoughts together. “Nay. But thee and Colin and his father, tha’s all wild things unaccustomed to others. Tha doesn't know what to do with others lookin’ at you and tryin’ to tend to you, so you snarl and retreat and have t’ try again.”

Mary fidgets with a blade of grass. “You think he’ll be back?”

Colin nods, leaning away to pet Captain. “Aye. An’ you an’ Colin, tha’rt like fox cubs. Tha growl and fight, mayhaps even draw blood, but tha still love one another. It’s how tha’ll learn tha strengths. Tha’ll be alright too.”

“I suppose,” Mary says slowly. “If he stops being such a little Rajah about every thing.”

Dickon laughs. “O’ course, Mistress Mary.”

Mary cannot help but laugh too. “I don’t mind it so much if you’re the one calling me contrary.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“That’s stupid,” Marie says.

Suz pauses in her retelling. “What, the nickname?”

“No, not minding it just because it was Grandpa Dickon saying it,” Marie says. “It’s still a terrible name.”

Suz peers at her. “Are you the one they used to call Marie C.? For ‘contrary’?”

“No,” Marie says, a little too loudly. 

“Who’s saying it and why does make a big difference,” Suz says gently. “In Grandma Mary’s case she didn’t mind because she knew Grandpa Dickon meant it kindly, but someone else still could have used it to hurt her and that wouldn’t have been okay.”

Marie rolls her eyes, uncomfortable, and Suz lets it drop. They sit for a few moments in silence. 

“So did he come back?”

Suz doesn’t ask who. “Yes. And Grandma Mary and Grandpa Colin still fought, but it stopped being to hurt each other and became more of a way to understand things by hashing them out. Their relationship was always more fiery than either of their relationships with Grandpa Dickon.”

Marie hunches her shoulders. “I feel a little bad for him. He always seems like the odd one out.”

Suz considers that. “He was a little bit, I guess, since he already had a whole family he knew he could count on, and even if his family basically adopted Mary and Colin too it wasn’t quite the same. But he served a very important role for Mary and Colin, as they did for him. It’s a mistake to discount that just because it looks a little different from the outside.”

Marie sighs at her. “What does that mean?”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Having a task to do is good. It’s restful to focus completely on tying back the roses on the western side of the Garden and let everything else slip out of his head. Dickon quickly loses himself in the delicate work.

Gradually, however, he comes to realise that there has been an odd sound near him for several minutes now, and also that the morning has shaded into midday without him noticing. He leans back on his heels, stretching, and is surprised to realise there are no people nearby besides his animal companions. Usually by this time Mary or Colin has come into the Garden as well.

The sound continues, and Dickon takes a moment to try to figure out what it is. A knock-knocking sound, like Soot trying to break a snail shell open on a rock, but louder and farther away. 

The robin flutters down to the rose bush and gives him a very eloquent look. Dickon smiles.

“Alright. I’ll see what th’ noise is and make it stop.”

The robin flaps his wings imperiously and goes to investigate the freshly-turned earth near the sundial, content that one of his humans will intervene. The robin seems to find them to be more useful than annoying, which pleases Dickon.

Dickon follows the irregular knocking noise out of the Garden and onto the long walk. He steps into the sunlight just as Colin picks up another rock and pulls his arm back to throw it at the wall, stopping when he sees Dickon. For a moment he looks both sheepish and defiant, and then he drops the rock and says “Oh, hello, Dickon,” in a casual tone.

Dickon smiles at him. “Mornin’.”

Colin shifts his weight from foot to foot. He seems overexcited, unable to settle, like he used to be each year when the spring finally came while they were children. Truthfully, even now he still gets very restless in the spring.

“I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing out here,” Colin says finally.

Dickon shrugs and continues his slow amble over to where Colin is standing. Nothing is more effective on Colin than silence.

“I am too upset to go into the Garden today,” Colin announces. “The Garden is a place of tranquility and happiness, and I will not bring discord into it. I will remain out here until I am in the proper frame of mind to - what happened to your face?”

Dickon stumbles to a halt, embarrassed. He’d forgotten the black eye. “Eh, that. It’s alright. What’s got thee in such a right state?”

“Did someone hurt you?” Colin demands, fists clenching. “Dickon, tell me this instant. Has someone been unkind to you?”

Colin has come a long way from the thin, sickly boy he’d been when Dickon first met him, but now that they’re all nearly grown he’s still a slender thing and a little on the short side. He doesn’t seem to realise it. A fortnight ago he’d tried to box the ears of the son of one of Master Craven’s visiting business associates and Mary, being far and away the most fearsome of the three of them, had had to rescue him.

“It’s alright,” Dickon says again, as soothingly as possible. “It’ll heal, quick as anythin’.”

“But someone still hurt you!” Colin protests. “Dickon, I insist!”

“Scrap with one o’ th’ village lads,” Dickon says. “It weren’t nothin’.”

Colin relents a little bit. “Well, I hope you left him looking twice as bad.”

Dickon doesn’t like fighting. He’d let the other boy get his hit in and then waited patiently for him to stop posturing and go away. It had been over fast and he doesn’t expect it to happen again. Dickon knows he’s a little unusual, and not everybody likes what they don’t understand. His Ma had had a word with the other boy’s gran and that’s likely to be the end of that.

“His knuckles are like to be sore today,” Dickon says, grinning.

Colin shakes his head. “I don’t understand how things like this don’t bother you.”

Dickon tips his head back to look at the sky. “A bruise don’t make the day less nice, or th’ moor less pretty or th’ sun less warm. There are still things growin’.”

He lowers his gaze to see Colin smiling at him. “You’re a very unique person, Dickon Sowerby.”

Dickon laughs. “Eh, probably for the best. Ma says the world can only bear one of me. Now, why art tha upset?”

Colin’s smile falters. “Oh, it’s… I guess it isn’t important, either. You’re right. The day is very nice.”

“Just supposin’ a nice day fixes everything for me don’t mean it has to do likewise for thee.”

Colin nods. “I suppose not.” He digs in the earth with the toe of his shoe for a moment, and then says to the ground, “The Granvilles invited Mary to their house for a visit. There is to be a ball. Father says she should go.”

Dickon frowns. “Weren’t th’ Granville boy the one tha tried to -”

“He was bothering Mary,” Colin says hotly. “He kept trying to make her pay attention to him when she clearly wasn’t interested. I don’t like him.”

Dickon mulls this over. “Do Mary want to go?”

Colin looks embarrassed. “No, but then I told her I wouldn’t allow her to go, and now she says she will. I got upset,” he says defensively when he sees Dickon’s expression. 

Dickon has to smile. He does enjoy watching Mary and Colin be themselves at each other. “What is so terrible about her goin’ away for a weekend?”

Colin doesn’t answer for quite some time.

“What if…” he begins slowly, and then stops for another long moment. Dickon waits patiently. “What if, what if she likes them more than she likes us? What if she decides to stay there?”

Dickon blinks. “An’ leave th’ Garden?”

Colin’s shoulders settle a little bit. “You’re right. It’s silly.” He bites his lip, looking sideways at Dickon for a long moment before saying gently, “You do know, though, that it won’t always be like this? The three of us here in this house? Someday we’ll be called away, to other places and other people.”

Dickon looks away. Colin will probably want to travel. He’s always talked about it. And Mary - she came from somewhere else originally. Fine folk aren’t like Dickon and his family - they marry other fine folk and move away.

Colin is probably right.

“Well. I’ll stay here, then, so tha can come back,” he says finally.

Colin reaches out and touches him lightly on the shoulder. “Would you like to go places? Travel with me?”

Dickon thinks about the pictures in the books Colin and Mary have, of far-off places and strange-looking people, and shivers. He can’t imagine the things in them, the dry sand by the Pyramids and the bare rock of the Alps. It doesn’t seem sensible, to have ground like that. Where do the plants grow?

He supposes there are probably animals, though.

“Maybe,” he hedges.

“I could also bring things back for you,” Colin says kindly. “Then it would be like traveling, only you wouldn’t have to go anywhere. I could send you packages.”

Dickon imagines getting packages at his mother’s house full of exotic things from foreign lands, and smiles. It seems so unreal.

Colin laughs. “Of course, when have you ever wanted _things_?” He says, grinning. “I suppose I’ll need to find you strange animals and wondrous plants. Come, let’s go into the Garden - I feel that my mood will no longer dim the flowers, and we should decide if we can fit a menagerie.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“You can’t,” Marie says with certainty. “Fit a menagerie, I mean.”

“No, fortunately they decided against it,” Suz agrees. “They would have had to remove the old tree, and none of them wanted to do that. Grandpa Colin always insisted that he could feel his mother’s spirit in the Garden when he was quiet enough and I think he was worried that would stop if they removed the tree.”

Marie shudders. “Is that why they say there are ghosts in the Garden?”

Suz’s smile is enigmatic. “You’ll have to tell me after your overnight, I guess.”

Marie scowls at her. “Why is the overnight even a thing? Why make us do this?”

Suz is quiet for a moment, looking out the window. “A few reasons. Partly it’s because kids like to scare each other, and there’s nothing better for scaring younger siblings than making them spend a night alone in the dark after telling them a bunch of scary stories. Partly… partly it’s because we’re always safe in the Garden.”

“People keep saying that,” Mary says, exasperated. “What makes the Garden so much safer than anywhere else?”

“That we believe it is, I guess,” Suz says softly. “Sometimes you need to know that there’s a safe place somewhere for you, no matter what the place you’re in already is like.”

Marie studies her, a little unnerved by her seriousness. “Did Grandpa Dickon ever go abroad with Grandpa Colin?” she asks abruptly. “Or Grandma Mary?”

“Not really,” Suz says. “Technically he went abroad during World War I and so did Grandma Mary, but that wasn’t for sightseeing.”

Marie frowns. “I wouldn’t think he’d want to be a soldier.”

“He didn’t,” Suz says dryly. “Grandpa Colin tried to intervene and get him out of it, but it didn’t work. Grandpa Dickon didn’t think it was fair of him to try, anyway. In those days a woman could join the Salvation Army and serve as a nurse as long as she could pay her own way, which is what Grandma Mary did. She always said she did it because Archie forbade her to, but I always thought she probably just didn’t want Grandpa Dickon over there alone.”

“Grandpa Colin didn’t go?”

“No, and not for lack of trying, either,” Suz says dryly. “On paper he was disqualified for health reasons, but after Archie died it came out that he’d called in a few favors to have Grandpa Colin disqualified so he would stay home. But Grandpa Colin did convince him to turn the manor into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, so that was how he spent the war.”

“That's not bad,” Marie says. 

“Not on the face of it, I guess,” Suz says wryly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Another day, another white feather. Colin sighs and tucks it away in a pocket to add to his collection. Someday soon he’s going to make himself a sign to wear that says ‘Not a coward, just sickly’. Or maybe ‘Asthmatic, not an arse’.

What a long way he’s come from the little boy who declared himself well. And immortal, if memory serves. That boy never would have considered labeling himself an invalid again. 

He turns away from the village post office and continues on towards home. The one good thing about the war was that it had convinced Father to agree to some modernizations. The estate has an automobile attached to it, now, and about half of the house has been wired for electricity. Father had resisted that one the most, but once he’d seen the wounded soldiers and their caretakers he’d relented. 

There has been no letter from either Mary or Dickon for nearly a fortnight. Colin is trying not to worry about it. 

Once he’s back at the house, automobile returned to its resting place and meager amount of mail delivered to Father, his finds himself a little bit at loose ends. Unsurprisingly, his feet take that opportunity to send him to the Garden. 

He spends a lot of time in the Garden. Probably too much, if he’s being truthful. Every time, as he gets to the no longer secret entrance, he pauses for just a moment. What if Mary and Dickon are inside waiting for him? What if he’ll be able to step through a magic veil and return to their childhoods, when concealing his good health seemed like the most exciting and important adventure they’d ever been on?

He walks into the Garden. He is the only one there, save for Robin. What generation of Robin this one is he is unsure, although Dickon probably knows down to the day. 

He sits down under a spray of columbines and sighs. Dickon’s letters are usually short and to the point, accompanied by little sketches and doodles as if he’s paused between each word to really consider the next one and his pen has carried on writing in the meantime. They usually come addressed to Martha and then get passed around to Colin and the rest of the family. 

Mary’s are less frequent but always long, and he can guess how hard her day has been by how much she talks about the Garden. Good days are generally marked by scathing descriptions of the war and the people in charge. Colin usually keeps Mary’s letters to himself. The bad day letters feel too personal, too exposed, and in any case only he and Dickon would really understand some of the things she writes about the Garden, and he worries about how others would react to Mary’s disrespect in the rest. 

It scrapes at his nerves to be forced to remain here while Mary and Dickon and practically all of Britain are off fighting the war. He had thought about trying to aid the war effort in other ways, administratively or diplomatically (before the War he _had_ made extensive travels on his own and suffered no ill effect, which everyone seems to forget) or even with factory work like the women, but Father had gotten upset when he brought it up. 

He knows that overseeing the hospital work happening at the Manor is important, but it feels so, so _passive_. He would much rather prefer to _do_ something. It is so very tempting to throw one of his old tantrums and see if he’d be able to get his way.

He sighs, giving the beautiful, untouched Garden around him a forlorn look. That’s probably just about all the time he’s got to spare for wallowing in self-pity today, sadly. He should go back to the Manor and at least pretend that he’s doing something useful.

The War ends on a Monday. A fortnight later Colin wakes up from where he’d fallen asleep in the Garden to find Mary sitting next to him, looking thinner and older but otherwise unchanged aside from the deathgrip she has on his hand. Dickon returns a month after that, with a bright-eyed, three-legged mouse in one pocket and a rosemary plant growing in a coffee cup in the other.

Colin has seen too much of what other returning soldiers look like to be surprised that Mary and Dickon are not quite the people they were when they left, and his willingness to accept whatever frame of mind they’ve returned in seems to help. On the surface they’re much the same - Mary’s tongue is a little bit sharper, perhaps, and Dickon is a little quieter, but otherwise they seem glad to fall back into their old places.

Father and Dickon’s family are too glad to have them back to probe too deeply, and Colin is too mindful of the bond the three of them have always shared to ever mention the nights they’ve all spent sitting in the Garden, him in the middle with Mary and Dickon pressed up against his sides and a blanket thrown over their shoulders.

“I knew the Garden would still be here,” Mary whispers one night.

Dickon holds out one hand so that his mouse can make her way across Colin’s knees and over to Mary.

“I told Plucky it would be like this,” he says, his smile a ghostly reflection of his usual bright grin.

Colin tightens his arms around both of them. “As if I would let you come back to anything less,” he says.

“Did you ever think growing up would be like this?” Mary asks, watching Plucky climb up her fingers. Most girls, Colin reflects, are expected to shriek when they see mice. Mary has never seen any reason to do what is expected of her.

“Th’ War was a surprise,” Dickon says dryly, and they all giggle like children.

“No, I mean - the three of us, in the Garden still. I remember when the most frightening thing I could imagine was someone taking the Garden from me. It’s nice that we’ve made it here.”

“I thought I would die first,” Colin says quietly. He’d be lying if he said the thought of that doesn’t sometimes still wake him at night, feeling for a lump on his back.

“Never thought about it much,” Dickon admits. “Seasons keep goin’ no matter who’s here to enjoy ‘em. Things keep livin’ and dyin’… th’ Garden lasted ten years of bein’ forgotten before we came, in twice that time there would still be livin’ things here.”

To people who don’t know Dickon that might sound fatalistic, but Colin finds it soothing.

“The Garden will always be here,” he says. “It will live forever and ever.”

“Just like you,” Mary teases, elbowing him.

Colin sticks his tongue out at her. “Maybe I will. And I warn you, if I’m going to be here forever you’ll have to keep me company.”

“Seems fair to me,” Dickon says, leaning against him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“I don’t get how that means we’ll _always_ be safe in the Garden,” Marie says.

Suz gives her a tolerant look. “Fair enough. But you should consider that during the Blitz part of the Manor and a chunk of the grounds were destroyed, but the Garden was untouched. Not even debris in over the wall.”

“Okay, fine,” Marie concedes grudgingly.

Suz gives her a faint smile. “Whether you think the Garden is protected or not, do you feel less nervous about spending the night there?”

Marie sighs. As much as she hates to admit it, the idea that Mary and Dickon and Colin often spent the night there is a little soothing. “I guess.”

“Then my work here is done.” Suz gets up from the windowseat and taps Marie on the knee. “Up and at ‘em, kiddo. Time to face the music.”

Marie gives her a sour look. ‘This wasn’t punishment enough?”

Suz laughs. “For punching Dickie in the nose? No. This was a _treat_. Up you get.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Two nights later, Marie stands at the entrance to the Garden with a blanket in her arms. Officially, adults don’t know about the overnights. Unofficially, her mother had left a flashlight and a bag of snacks in her room for apparently no reason.

Marie takes a deep breath and steps inside. She knows the older kids are watching her from the Long Walk.

Inside, the Garden is dimly lit by the moon. It seems mysterious and otherworldly, like by stepping through the doorway Marie’s left her normal world behind and gone… elsewhere.

She shivers and heads deeper in. On Suz’s suggestion she’d gone to the Garden this morning to pick out a place to stay. She’d chosen a spot across from the old tree, under a spray of columbines. She likes to think it’s where her grandparents had sat after coming back from the War, but she’d been too embarrassed to ask Suz.

She settles down with the blanket around her shoulders, flashlight and snacks close to hand. Just in case.

At first every little noise makes her tense up. An animal? The older kids coming to scare her by pretending to be ghosts? _Real_ ghosts?

Gradually, though, she starts to feel like there’s a pattern to it. She sees the dark shadow of bats flitting by overhead and hears the faint sound of their echolocation. A few fireflies spend a while entertaining themselves over by the lilies. She hears a faint scratching in the bushes near her and wonders if it’s one of Plucky’s many-times great-grandchildren.

There’s a whole world here, completely ignoring her as long as she stays still. There’s something a little bit magic about it.

Slowly, slowly, the quiet sounds of the Garden lull her to sleep. She fights it for as long as she can, wary of her older cousins trying to play a trick, but eventually her head is so heavy that she has to rest it on her knees, and then the rest of her is so heavy that she simply has to lie down.

“I’m still awake,” she mumbles out loud.

“Course tha’rt,” a quiet voice says above her. “Sleep gently, sweet thing. Tha’ll be safe here.”

“Who does this one belong to?” Another voice asks.

“All of us, of course,” says a third.

The blanket settles a little more firmly on her shoulder. Marie stirs a little, aware that she should probably wake up completely.

“Shh, no,” one of the voices whispers. “Go back to sleep, little one.”

She is very tired, and with the blanket resettled she does feel much cozier. Marie allows herself to fade away.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“There really _are_ ghosts in the Garden!” Marie insists the next morning.

Dickie rolls his eyes at her. His face is still bruised, she’s glad to see. “Look, you made it through the night, everyone is very impressed,” he says in a bored tone.

Marie scowls at him, frustrated, and then notices a bit of movement in the background. It’s Cousin Suz, come to stand in the doorway.

“I’m not trying to sound braver, I’m saying I actually heard them,” Marie insists, but it lacks the conviction of her first retelling. She knows she’s not lying, but what if it had been a dream? What if it hadn’t been who she thinks it was?

Across the room, Suz smiles and winks.

“There are _definitely_ ghosts in the Garden, _so there_ ,” Marie says firmly, and punches Dickie in the nose.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn’t decide what pairing to go with (Mary/Dickon? Mary/Colin? Dickon/Colin? Mary/Dickon/Colin?) so I left it ambiguous. You may read into it what you like. Additionally, I apologize for Dickon's dialect. I usually try not to write in dialect because I think it turns out badly more than it works well, but it's so prevalent and such a plot point in the original book that I felt I should give it a try. I hope it didn't throw anyone out of the story too much!
> 
> Finally, the memoir _Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country_ by Margaret Hall is hard to find but an excellent account of what a woman's overseas WWI service was like, and the whole idea for that section of this story pretty much came from that.


End file.
